Navigant Research Blog

Does a Devilish Startup Have an Answer for the Internet of Things?

Neil Strother — June 5, 2012

A new startup aims to advance the idea of the “Internet of Things” in a way that could have a significant impact on the energy business. Electric Imp was formed in 2011 by former iPhone hardware engineering manager Hugo Fiennes, former Gmail designer Kevin Fox, and veteran firmware engineer Peter Hartley.

Their idea is that products from dishwashers to doorbells to blenders will include slots for “Imp cards,” which will enable users to wirelessly monitor, control, and get alerts from everyday devices. Electric Imp acts as the web interface in the process, handling cloud services in the background.

The Imp card has an embedded processor and communicates over standard Wi-Fi protocols, including encryption. The card itself has a familiar SD card form factor. It’s similar to an Eye-Fi card used in digital cameras for automatically uploading photos to computers, tablets, or phones. But in this case, the device is controlled via a cloud service that sends alerts when energy rates are cheapest for running a washer, for example, or kicks on lights when certain conditions are met, among other possibilities.

The Imp cloud service acts as the central hub for each device. In order to set up a Wi-Fi connection, the company uses patent-pending technology called Blinkup to enter SSID and password information on iOS and Android smartphones; this data is beamed wirelessly to an Imp’s light sensor by quickly pulsing the handset’s screen on and off.

The company, based in Los Altos, California, is in talks with equipment makers to get them to build the slots into new products. The Imp cards themselves will retail for $25 each. The company plans to release a developer preview bundle in June, with the first compatible devices expected later this year.

Though Electric Imp is an early startup, with little proven in the way of a business, it has a strong management team plus $7.9 million in Series A money from Redpoint Ventures and Lowercase Capital. If Fiennes and his team can make sense of connecting devices and the Internet beyond what we see today, I wouldn’t bet against them. The big challenge will be to get manufacturers on board quickly enough and at a scale to make a difference. And that can be quite a demon to overcome.